Two days the war-party remained encamped at the place where we have seen them, hunting, fishing, fasting, and quarrelling, the latter so effectually that numbers of them took to their canoes and paddled angrily away, scarce a fourth of the original array being left for the march upon the dreaded enemy.

It was no easy task which now lay before them.  The journey was long, the way difficult.  Onward again swept the diminutive squadron, the shallop outsailing the canoes, and making its way up the Richelieu, Champlain being too ardent with the fever of discovery to await the slow work of the paddles.  He had not, however, sailed far up that forest-enclosed stream before unwelcome sounds came to his ears.  The roar of rushing and tumbling waters sounded through the still air.  And now, through the screen of leaves, came a vision of snowy foam and the flash of leaping waves.  The Indians had lied to him.  They had promised him an unobstructed route to the great lake ahead, and here already were rapids in his path.

How far did the obstruction extend?  That must be learned.  Leaving the shallop, he set out with part of his men to explore the wilds.  It was no easy journey.  Tangled vines, dense thickets, swampy recesses crossed the way.  Here lay half-decayed tree-trunks; there heaps of rocks lifted their mossy tops in the path.  And ever, as they went, the roar of the rapids followed, while through the foliage could be seen the hurrying waters, pouring over rocks, stealing amid drift-logs, eddying in chasms, and shooting in white lines of foam along every open space.

Was this the open river of which he had been told; this the ready route to the great lake beyond?  In anger and dismay, Champlain retraced his steps, to find, when he reached the shallop, that the canoes of the savages had come up, and now filled the stream around it.

The disappointed adventurer did not hesitate to tell them that they had lied to him; but he went on to say that though they had broken their word he would keep his.  In truth, the vision of the mighty lake, with its chain of islands, its fertile shores, and bordering forests, of which they had told him, rose alluringly before his eyes, and with all the ardor of the pioneer he was determined to push onward into that realm of the unknown.

But their plans must be changed.  Nine of the men were sent back to Quebec with the shallop.  Champlain, with two others, determined to proceed in the Indian canoes.  At his command the warriors lifted their light boats from the water, and bore them on their shoulders over the difficult portage past the rapids, to the smooth stream above.  Here, launching them again, the paddles once more broke the placid surface of the stream, and onward they went, still through the primeval forest, which stretched away in an unbroken expanse of green.